Here and There

Reading George Packer’s article on the situation in Tal Afar, Iraq, in the April 10, 2006 issue of The New Yorker.

The article mostly discusses the success U.S. and coalition forces have had in that city (especially contrasted with slash-and-burn failures in places like Fallujah). The article doesn’t ignore difficulties in the ever-changing situation in Tal Afar, or Iraq as a whole. But Packer’s assessment is fair. The article discusses the plan of one officer (Colonel H. R. McMaster) to actually take the time to try and understand the psychology of the enemy, to understand why Iraqis fight Iraqis.

But what I wish to comment on here is a passage toward the middle of the article. Packer describes a conversation he had with a mustachioed Iraqi colonel respected by the Americans. The Iraqi officer, Colonel Majid Abdul-Latif Hatem, is asked if civil war is preventable. He responds:

“At any moment, there will be war between the two sects [Sunni and Shiite],” he said. “I want to tell you the truth.” He repeated the word in English. “Right now, you are observing the men of the Iraqi Army, and seeing what’s on the outside. But I know the interior of them. My men are not coming here for nationalist beliefs, for one Iraq. They are here because they need work. So don’t be surprised if they stand and watch killing between the people here.”

The passage reminds me of the fact that a “nation” called Iraq is entirely a Western construct. The formerly imperial British were given most of the area after World War I, and despite granting a modicum of independence in 1932, the Brits retook the region at the outset of World War II, concerned about Iraq’s Nazi leanings.

Following the war, a British occupation began, and lasted until a military coup in the late 1950s. Then a series of what I’m calling irrelevant coups brought the Ba’ath party and Saddam Hussein to power in 1968. If you don’t know the basic history from that point on, I feel sorry for you. Read more here.

The point I want to make is not necessarily that it takes a native iron fist to hold these disparate groups together. My thoughts are that maybe dividing the country up isn’t such a bad idea. Odd, you may say, given my opposition to the plan to carve the Omaha school district up into racially-identified sections. But Iraq is different.

Iraq doesn’t have a Brown v. Board of Education. They don’t have a preamble or a Bill of Rights. They didn’t have a Civil Rights movement, or Women’s Suffrage, or, god forbid, hippies.

The closest analogy would be that Iraq has had civil war. I sometimes think the U.S. was wrong to fight our Civil War. So many people died, and for what? To force people to change their racist ways, only to have them carry their program on in a new fashion. It must’ve all boiled down to economics, the need to keep the South in the union because of its agriculture. Sound familiar?

The West (and increasingly, China and India) need a unified and reasonable Iraq because of its oil. I’m not saying the war is all about oil. I’m saying it’s about the misguided idea that you can force people like the Sunnis, Shiites, and Kurds to live together peacefully, so that you can then get the oil you need. It’s a foolish idea, borne out in the past 80 or so years of bloodshed.

The passage from Colonel Majid reminded me of the difficulties any army faces in trying to force these age-old rivals to make peace, hold hands, and sing Zippidy Do-Da.

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